


under your skin, over the moon

by TomBowline



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: And Now For Something Completely Different, Angst and Porn, Canon Compliant, Dreams, Frottage, Intercrural Sex, M/M, POV Harry D. S. Goodsir, Pining, Water Sex, abominable preponderance of simile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26889745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline
Summary: Harry's dreams bring him beautiful things, on occasion.
Relationships: Commander James Fitzjames/Harry D. S. Goodsir
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24
Collections: @terror_exe Prompt Fills





	under your skin, over the moon

**Author's Note:**

> Additional content warning for brief **death ideation** (specifically wishing to drown). Could not find an appropriate Archive tag so I'm putting it here.
> 
> Prompt fill for [a @terror_exe tweet](https://twitter.com/terror_exe/status/1310643574384586753?s=21): "harry goodsir/james fitzjames, experimental, a mercy, books, water sex". Once again I am 4 for 5; I didn't quite get books to feature. Jury is also out on the experimental part...it's kind of just a keyed up version of how I already write? You decide.
> 
> Title from "Roses Are Falling" by Orville Peck because that's what I happened to be listening to tonight.

Harry wakes in the mid of night to a queasy rolling all about him that tests his conviction of time. There has been no thaw for two years and there is not likely to be one now, when first sunrise has barely come and gone. Still, there it is: arrhythmic, moody, making his head light with the unseen particulars of gravity. No terrible silence or groaning of ice, either - here is the barely-remembered sound of the engine, here is the murmuring kiss of wave against hull, here is the snap and creak of the sails on their lines. Harry feels a swelling in his chest that may become a whoop if he is not careful.

As soon as he thinks to rush up to the weather deck he is there, shivering in shirt and trousers, watching dumbly as Erebus’ proud prow cuts through a dizzying expanse of open water. Bergs still loom here and there, and he can hear no seabirds yet, but by some miracle visited upon them in the night it is clear enough to sail through. He does whoop now, a wild and thready sound that whips up into the thin air and tangles about the mainmast. As he watches the moon glint off the dark blessed waves he catches something else in the corner of his eye - that the deck has seemed empty besides him, he takes no notice of. The figure who now stands at the far end of the deck is tall, long of hair, with one hand raised to him as he calls out—

“Harry!”

This naming, so sweet alone, pierces Harry through. He feels all the joy and anticipation that have been whipping about his chest in a gale die down to be replaced by the fresh snowfall of quiet acceptance: a dream, then. Only in dreams does Captain Fitzjames call him Harry.

“James,” he calls back, offering a sad smile too small to be seen across the deck. Perhaps he will not be able to look his commander in the eye come morning, but he will take what spells of calm water his mind sees fit to bestow - will gather them as jealously and hastily as a starving man, now, for he is becoming more and more certain that these sweet moments are the only ones he will get. 

James is there next to him, then, leant against the taffrail with his hair coming down about his face. Clothed in his gansey, forgoing his greatcoat, wrapped in the moonlight. Beautiful, Harry thinks, you are so beautiful. And since it is a dream he has no compunction to tell him so.

James turns his head to smile at him, a little fey thing that narrows his keen eyes. His face, Harry notes, is fuller and more full of color than it has been; his hair is lustrous and well-kept. He gives out such an aura of health that Harry is warmed by it as by a parlor-room fire, merry and rewarding after a long day. Harry’s days have been so very long.

“Shall we take a boat out?” James’ voice, too, is strong and rich. It curls around Harry like the smell of something baking, like the heat of a summer night. He inclines his head to the jolly-boats. “Nobody’s around to see us.”

Again, time seems to fold onto itself: one moment James is reaching for the rope that secures the boats, and the next they are out on the water. The contrast is dizzying: above, ice looming high in crystal streaks of blue and white, the pack cracked open like a geode, sky purple and black and pricked with stars; below, the ocean like a windowpane in the night, moon shining through it until Harry cannot tell up from down, small waves gently swaying their little boat. And in the middle of it all, James, his warm spot, his private curtain of comfort drawing around him. Drawing close, now, leaning forward. His kiss is familiar and strange - Harry has had dreams like this before, and the touch is like the greeting of a ghost who was once his lover. Harry finds himself sinking into it, letting himself be pulled under in the tide. James’ fingertip burns into the fleshy bare space under his chin and James’ hand splays anchor-like across his heart. Everything is full of James, a sweet muffling of the world.

And then slowly the world reshapes; James is across from him once again now, tugging at his stock. Before Harry can think why this should be odd James has shucked vest, gansey, shirt, boots, trousers, socks - all neatly folded, all disappearing to nowhere - and folded himself over the side (boat immune to his influence, as if he weighs nothing at all) to slide like a gleaming narrow fish into the water. 

It is all panic for a moment, but James is not sinking, not freezing, not gone: he leans up onto the side of the boat again - arms gleaming wet and swell of backside just visible in the swirl of indigo water - and gives Harry a smile that says he knows precisely how he looks. “Come in,” he says in his solstice voice. 

Harry dips his halting hand, still tentative of losing a finger, into the sea - it is warm, almost hot. He wonders why, and immediately his dream supplies the answer: they have made it, they are through to the Sandwich Islands. A beautiful fantasy, an impossible deliverance. As soon as he knows it he ceases to be cold amongst the looming floes of ice, begins to feel overwarm even. Looks to James - dark eyes, long lashes, expanse of bare shoulder and folded hands - and back into his own blushing self. Indecent, it seems. Presumptuously intimate. But here again is James, this James who calls him Harry, this James whose eyes are on him like a lover’s. This James who is a dream. 

Harry undoes his trousers. He leaves his shirt on to let its tails obscure his hairy backside and soft prick, but lets go all else. And he comes in.

In his hand the water was hot, shocking in its novelty. On his body it sinks into his skin as if he has turned amphibian. Suddenly he is not a man but a sponge, soaking in the water’s pleasant warmth and James’ body heat against his own. For here is James, stroking through his whiskers to kiss his lips again, legs slipping amongst Harry’s own through the polite resistance of the water. His pulse beneath Harry’s nose - his nipple tightening in Harry’s fingers - his well-fleshed ribs against Harry’s forearm. Little attestations of want and of wellbeing. Beautiful, Harry thinks wildly, beautiful, beautiful. 

The first touch of his prick to James’ hip is slicker than the water can account for, better by bounds than what he can do for himself, and almost novel in its pleasure for he has been too much dispirited even to take himself in hand for months now. But the water is warm and he has James in his arms, reaching down to toy with his hood and stroke along his balls, and he feels himself twitch to hardness with eager alacrity. His shirt is wet and tugs his limbs down, down to palm James’ arse and clasp his wonderful yard; James tugs at the collar of the shirt in turn, frowning peevishly at Harry in the moonlight. “Harry,” he whispers, “Harry, let me see you.”

Harry flings the sodden shirt over his head to let the tide take it where it may; he cannot refuse such an entreaty. Immediately James’ hands move to stroke over the soft flesh of his chest, to rake nails through his thatch of wiry hair and run callused thumbs across his nipples. Harry has the impression of a woman having her tits played with - it is not at all an unpleasant sensation. 

Meanwhile James has slotted his cock against Harry’s own and begun to rub their lengths together gently. James’ tongue in Harry’s mouth, James’ prickhead bumping his stones, James’ thumb massaging Harry’s foreskin, all stitched together by the water licking and lapping at their bodies, pushing them gently together. 

Maybe this is the rest of the dream, Harry thinks, floating here prick-to-prick in the tropical current with James moaning into his neck and stroking the small of his back. He will be happy with this, happy to have this when he wakes. Then James is taking Harry’s prick and nudging it up between his thighs, letting the head brush between stones and hole, slotting his own cock against Harry’s hip. The hand on his back taps and pushes,  _ Move, now, have me, _ and Harry is far more than happy. He feels a writhing sort of animal joy to be fucking up between James’ thighs, feeling the furred pulse of James’ balls at his belly and the eager rut of James’ prick at his hip, letting his prick brush James’ twitching hole as he thrusts. It is the most wonderful sort of sensation, this soaking wet warmth and solid soulful flesh. They are buoyed up by god knows what force, adrift in an ice field off Maui, two officers of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy making love to each other in open water. None of it matters. What matters is the scrape of James’ teeth on the tender place behind Harry’s jaw. What matters is the feel of James’ hand clutching and roving over Harry’s flesh. What matters is the burst of heat in the water as James comes, squeezing his thighs tighter around Harry as he shudders and gasps so prettily, beautiful, beautiful. 

Harry wishes wildly to be pulled under, then, as the water tugs gently at him, as their hairy legs tangle and twitch. It would be a mercy to perish here, before he wakes, in open water and in loving arms. He settles instead for kissing James, trying to shape a farewell with lips and tongue, as he feels his crisis begin to overtake him. His dreams never last beyond this point.

Harry wakes suddenly, jolts to half-awareness with prick pulsing eager and hard into his own belly. He barely gets a hand under himself to tug at it before he is coming like an indifferent death in hot stripes over the inside of his nightshirt, thinking of James, thinking of Maui. Thinking of what is beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> I swear this wasn’t even supposed to be my first FJ/Goodsir fic. I have a very fluffy pre-canon piece in draft stages right now. Honest. There’s sea creatures in it and everything.


End file.
